


In Need

by SylvanWitch



Series: Proving the Exception [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the Third bond, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 17:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s their first mission since the Third Bond, and despite extensive psychological evaluations and physical examinations and a battery of field tests designed to measure what they’d gained or lost in the joining, no one had been really sure what might happen.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Need

**Author's Note:**

> Given the skepticism at SHIELD regarding the efficacy of the Bonding, I wanted to explore how two professional men who are bonded learn to use their altered state. I figured the learning curve might be pretty steep. No sense playing at the shallow end, though, not when you can dive right into the hard *ahem* stuff.

“Phil,” Clint whispers on the private channel, need threading through his voice, making it higher, making Phil breathless.

 

Clint hasn’t lost control like this in weeks.  Maybe that’s why the need is so much more:  more powerful, more heated.  More difficult to ignore.

 

Clint’s need curls in Phil’s guts, stirring him.  With precise deliberation, Phil thumbs off the transmitter, removes his earpiece, rises from his seat at the comm. panel and moves toward the back doors of the van.

 

“Taking a break?” Sitwell asks, a second question hidden in the first.

 

“I’ll be back in ten,” Phil says, answering both.

 

He finds Clint where he’s been for the last six hours, kneeling motionless at the edge of the concrete wall on the top story of a condemned parking ramp.  Even with the dubious comfort of the barrier, the wind tears at him, dragging moisture from the corners of his eyes, which rest, almost unblinking, on the target, a sixth-floor office suite one block away.

 

Clint is too well-trained to move, too dedicated to taking the shot when it’s called to so much as glance at Phil, but of course, he knows Phil’s there.

 

It’s early enough in their new relationship that the raw assault of emotions pouring from Clint almost staggers Phil, and he kneels gratefully against the hard, cold concrete to wash his warm breath over Clint’s ear, watching as it condenses on the black, high-tech material of Clint’s watch-cap, fascinated by the way the tiny beads glisten as Clint shudders.

 

It’s their first mission since the Third Bond, and despite extensive psychological evaluations and physical examinations and a battery of field tests designed to measure what they’d gained or lost in the joining, no one had been really sure what might happen.

 

It’s why Sitwell’s sitting in the ops van.  They’d wanted a friend with them, not someone looking to prove his prejudice correct.

 

“A lot of eyes on you today,” Nick had warned, giving Phil a look Phil had come to recognize as worry in his old friend.

 

“We’ll be fine,” Phil had heard himself saying in a voice far calmer than he felt.  Anchored to Clint, who was waiting in Phil’s office, foot jittering against the floor, one hand tapping out a rhythm against his knee, Phil had to focus to suppress the urge to shift his weight.

 

Any movement was weakness, drawing the keen attention of Fury’s sharpest gaze.

 

“You’d better,” Nick had warned, but there’d been no threat in it.  They both knew what would happen if Phil and Clint couldn’t work together.

 

Now, as his watch pulses the passing time in thirty-second intervals against his inner wrist, Phil wonders if they’ve failed.  Then he wonders who they’ve failed—themselves, each other, SHIELD?

 

He doesn’t want to draw Clint’s attention away from the target, but he has to touch him, has to ground himself somehow, close the circuit between them.

 

Settle the wild electrical buzz that’s setting his teeth on edge.

 

As soon as he touches the bare skin of Clint’s wrist where it peeks out between his glove and his jacket cuff, they loose simultaneous sighs of relief, any sound they’re making ripped away by the relentless wind that should be driving knives of ice into them both.

 

But Phil is warm, can feel the heat rising in him, feel it like his blood is boiling, surging up into the chalice of his ribs to spill out of his mouth in sounds that would scald them both.

 

It’s too much, this passion.

 

Clint makes a sound, a small and desperate noise, the kind that a man tries to keep behind his teeth, and Phil only hears it because they’re linked, because there’s nothing now that Phil can’t know about Clint, can’t drag from him just by running his thumb along the blue vein that throbs under his touch, blood racing to Clint’s heart, carrying Phil’s unspoken message.

 

Clint grunts like he’s been punched, his rifle echoing him, and he hasn’t finished muttering a brusque “Confirmed” into his mike before he’s dropping it and the gun, turning toward Phil, hands fisting in thick wool lapels of Phil’s coat, pulling Phil off-center so it’s like he’s plummeting, like the building pressing hard against his knees has disappeared and they’re in free-fall.

 

Clint catches him against his chest, pulls a sound out of Phil with his lips and teeth, plunges into Phil’s mouth, an obscene wet slide of tongue that tears a groan from him, a groan Clint swallows.

 

His hand is at Clint’s fly before he can think of why it’s a bad move, the wrong thing, and it’s Clint—impetuous, impossible Clint—who says, “No, wait,” though the words  have obviously been wrenched from him with great effort.

 

Phil takes in Clint’s appearance—wind-burned cheeks now ruddier with the flush of lust, eyes dark with need, mouth red and wet—and he wants to tell the world to go fuck itself, wants to feel the heft and heat of Clint against his palm and wring him dry.

 

As if he can see what Phil’s thinking—hell, he probably can—Clint laughs, a low, wicked chuckle that makes Phil’s toes curl inside his boots.  Then Clint shakes his head and rises gracefully to his feet; nothing but the tiniest list Phil-ward suggests anything has swayed him in his indefatigable balance.

 

Phil, on the other hand, feels like he’s still on a tightrope as Clint offers him a hand up and hauls him to his feet.

 

He spreads his feet, takes his weight on his heels, settling unconsciously into parade rest except for his hands, one of which reaches out without Phil’s volition to trace the artery in Clint’s neck that jumps under Phil’s searching touch.

 

They stay like that a moment longer, Phil counting Clint’s heartbeats, feeling his own heart easing into an identical rhythm.

 

Somewhere below them, a siren startles itself to life, coming to them like the wailing of the forgotten dead.  Something in the sound, maybe the forlorn promise of the pain that inevitably follows such a siren, breaks the hold need has on them both and lets Phil go long enough to suck in a gusting breath of lung-searing wind and cough it out again.

 

“Car’s on the second floor,” he begins.

  
“Spot 36.  Brown Bonneville.  PA plates.”  Clint continues the routine, voice steady.

 

“I’ll drive,” Coulson orders.

 

“Of course,” Barton concedes.

 

Situation normal.


End file.
